50 Years Since ‘Dr. Strangelove’

Every year — or most years — if we’re lucky, it’s every year — there’s what I like to call The Thing That Happened in Cinema. It’s the movie that does something different, that pushes the art form forward just a bit, that’s artistically brilliant but also new, somehow. In 2013, the Thing That Happened was BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR. In 1941, it was CITIZEN KANE. In 1980, it was RAGING BULL. In 1994, it was PULP FICTION. You recognize it when you see it . . . yet t’s just as sure that that film won’t win best picture, by any means. There isn’t a chance. It’s only later, a few years later, that people look up and wonder why so many people couldn’t see the obvious, or didn’t want to see it.

Fifty years ago, the thing that happened in cinema — the cinema of 1964 — was DR. STRANGELOVE. No, really, it wasn’t MARY POPPINS. Stanley Kubrick’s satirical classic is celebrated in the above gallery of interesting, behind the scenes photos.

Feature films turn 100 this year. Movies made a huge leap in their first 50 years, less of a leap since. DR. STRANGELOVE still feels avant garde, five decades later.